Sunday, November 24, 2013

Problems while upgrading to Windows 8.1

I just recently upgraded to Windows 8.1 and I selected the setting for "Keep my Windows Settings and Personal Files".

Part of the Windows 8.1 Upgrade required me to go through the setup wizard once again to set up an account for Windows Live syncing as well as requiring a Wireless network connection (even though I was connected to a wired network).

However, overall, the upgrade completely smoothly and seamlessly, but I knew that there was a good possibility some of my applications would stop working after the upgrade.

Bridged networking in VMWare Workstation 10 stopped working after upgrading to Windows 8.1

My HP Printer Network Driver had disappeared

Some of the libraries that I had configured with alternate location mappings had disappeared

Device sharing with some wireless network devices had also disappeared

For Classic Shell, I simply had to run a "Repair" on the installation in order to restore the Classic Shell Start menu on Windows 8.1.

For VMWare Workstation 10, I received the following error message when attempting to use any VMs with Bridged Networking:

When I looked at the list of available VMWare Services in the Services Control Panel, I found this:

Apparently, the VMWare DHCP and NAT Services had disappeared!

Therefore, I decided to run a "Repair" on the installation to see if I could resolve this issue:

After, the repair was complete, I reviewed the list of VMWare Services once again:

Fortunately, it looked like the VMWare DHCP and NAT Services were restored after the "Repair" operation. When I subsequently attempted to start one of my VMs with "Bridged" networking, the VM started correctly. Whew!!

Alternatively, you can try using the "Restore Default" option from the Virtual Network editor to see if this restores your VMWare NAT and DHCP services as well:

From the Edit menu, select Virtual Network Editor

On the Virtual Network Editor dialog, click on the button "Restore Default"